Sympathy's But A Word (Or Why Stein Never Really Loved Spirit)
by gastlyhauntergengar
Summary: As a scientist, you rely on the facts. Loving Spirit Albarn never was one. You guess you're okay with that. (Mild spoilers for the manga, implied Crona/Maka)


**A/N: **Dropping this here because it wouldn't leave my head while I was doing my Crona/Maka stuff. This thing "begins" at around anime episode 6, and "ends" somewhere vaguely towards the end of the manga?  
More Stein character study than anything else. Lemme know if you like it~

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On your first day back at the academy, you see her before you see him.

Maka Albarn: she flinches when she passes you, naïve eyes widened at the memory of your first encounter, then turns up her nose and tugs on Soul's hand in order to walk faster, insisting that he follow her as if he had a choice.

It reminds you so much of Kami that you laugh to yourself.

You instantly feel fifteen again, watching as Kami held onto Spirit's hand to pull him faster down the hall past you. Spirit never looked back at you once in those days, and you suspect that even if that Soul boy had any possible interest in you, neither would he.

Maka doesn't look too much like her father. You decide you like that about her, since Spirit's always been sort of dopey-looking anyway.

She's persistent like he is, though. As you begin to teach her classes, you notice that she is always the first to call on you, to point out and question what she thinks isn't right, or is morally unsound, about your lectures; even about her classmates. Her raised hand, her matter-of-fact-ness, her clear-cut eyes, her goodness and eagerness to correct, those things are all so very much Spirit; all things he used to use on you, when you were growing up.

She's beautiful too, well for fifteen years old, but that's a given. You're not one for attraction in the sexual sense, but you know fine aesthetics when you see them, it's scientific really; she's inherited her father's pale, clear skin and pouty mouth, and her mother's insightful bone structure, quick smile and knowing eyes.

You could match and cross-reference all the genetics if you watched her long enough, perhaps. Maka doesn't look too much like her father, but then again she does, if you put yourself in the shoes of someone near to her…

You've always wondered especially what it is about the Albarns that make them work; but her age, and the plenty of time you've spent away from Spirit, have sobered you up enough to know that your itch is nothing but a scientist's, and one you suppose you can just look past. It's easy to look at her and not do much but smile now; she could be interesting to you as he once was, but at most, this progeny of Spirit is a simple reminder; something that makes you reflect on him in his younger days, nostalgic for a past you smoke cigarettes because of, for the way he used to hold your hand as a kid.

It helps, too, that Spirit, though initially he feigns a fear of you, hasn't changed a bit when it comes to knowing you, as a man.

You watch her love the demon sword Crona when he arrives, and that makes something stir in you that you'd clinically label bitterness. But you're not one for emotions; the reflection of yourself that you start to see in Crona, and the persistence of Maka Albarn, mirroring that of her fifteen-year-old father's, gives you a physical reaction, that's all. Your inner-fissure, your need for a cigarette becomes rapt, irritating if you can't crunch it, when you see the way that he is hopeless, and still she follows him; that the madness in him is the way it was in you; still is, if you're being honest, but she gets so close to it that it could kill her, and the only scar she keeps from it is her insistence.

Maka Albarn is stubborn, and resolute, and wants Crona to be fixed, to be human.

Spirit Albarn was stubborn, and when he tried to fix you, you cut him in his sleep.

It wasn't for the sexual attraction, like you said. Kami used to tell him you got off on it, got off on his pain, but she doesn't understand that you couldn't register his pain, that you lusted for the knowledge of what exactly made him tick, not the pain.

That if he was ever in any real pain, he's never let you know it; dramatic overreactions to you and mentions of your surgery he still gives, but you can see that he is still whole, still strong, still the man of joy you always knew, still willing to be wielded by you and to trust you, even after twenty-five years.

That you couldn't've really killed him even if you'd tried.

Oh what could've been, if you'd known how to love him back then… when he kissed you once, fifteen years old and after a near-death mission almost killed you, and brought him close, oh how you wish your brain had shut itself off, had stopped the need to carnally know; how you wish that the feeling of your tongue in his mouth hadn't made you want to split him open with it, to run it like a knife through the hot, wet skin of his mouth, while he was busy stuttering "I'm sorry" and "I love you" through his lips, his shaking hands on your face, his feelings on his lips. The kiss had been an open burst, a raw moment, over before it could really begin, it never happened again; he was drunk on adrenaline and the thought of losing you, and for you it was nothing more than an experiment. It never happened again, though you could tell sometimes he wanted to speak on it, but he was soundly your mentor and lust was inappropriate; he was soundly your weapon, and your friend who wanted you safe and out of danger, and love was not allowing your loved ones to be harmed; he probably knew that it would harm you if he let you hurt him, that's why never told you with feelings that he loved you again.

It never happened again, and then Kami walked in on your moments away from stabbing your scalpel through his sleeping skull, to peel back the skin and guts and let the palms of your hands caress his simple, dead brain, you'd just wanted to know so badly how he ticked: your way of love.

Your madness had the potential to leave him scarred, before he left you.

When Crona someday leaves her, you hope it will not leave her scarred.

As it turns out, his absence does not.

He becomes more and more the villain; coats entire cities with his black blood, and watches them drown in it, and cuts his mother into pieces, the path of a kishin. You watch, however, as she grows into a strong and capable woman, her childish stubbornness refining into mature determination: the refusal to give up on the ones she loves, but the wisdom to keep herself safe and intact, to recognize her limits and be the balance of a lover and a fighter; an angel, in her own right.

Maka finds Crona eventually, makes her peace with him, and loves him from afar.

And that's from where the bitterness stems. Because in that way, she is so much her father; she is so much the man who married that woman and left you in the laboratory, and went on to lead such a normal life. He is the one who loved you enough to give you your space for fifteen years and never look back, to leave you alone the way you're best. Leaving you to ponder what could've been had you been normal, had all of his attempts on you worked and registered, had you not been such a scientist at birth.

But you aren't bitter. You just don't understand, is all.

Is your inability to be normal like him genetics? Maybe. After he left, you tried to pick your own brain to find out; the ecstasy that you felt as you cut into yourself should've been your answer, but it took the screw going through your head and the years in the dark you spent after that, for there to be a final nail in the coffin: there was never anything salvageable of you, never anything in human enough for you to give Spirit Albarn. You drilled a hole in your brain for the fuck of it, and he was married and had a child; these paths never would've met, and despite the fact that he kissed you once, the fact that for one momenthe wanted your soul and you needed each other, that need was unhealthy, too passionate, and soon you both knew it for the better. Your savage need to understand things is your downfall, and you don't possess the balance enough for sympathy; it has always been you over others, and you don't know anything else; sympathy's but a word, and people are so fickle that you laugh, and their mindless organs once got you off, and love is something you've always watched.

Had you been different...if only you'd never been born…

All what ifs, and therefore useless; as a scientist, you rely on the facts.

Loving Spirit Albarn never was one, and you guess you're okay with that.


End file.
